[cool-RR]

I think that anyone who complains about GitHub's price has gotten way too spoiled, or perhaps underestimates the amount of effort required to maintain a service of that quality and reliability. I find this to be another symptom of HN tunnel vision.

[M1573RMU74710N]

I don't think anybody is "complaining about GitHub's prices" per se...at least not the way you are implying. That is, I don't think anyone is saying GitHub is greedy, or not worth it ever or something like that....

However, the fact of the matter is they have a particular pricing plan, and that pricing plan is such that for certain people it becomes not worth it.

When you go to a fast food place, they generally offer you varying sizes of soda.

For most people that's fine....but for some people their needs may fall JUST in between two sizes...for example they want more soda than a medium, but they don't really need a large.

So they start buying a large...because that's a reasonable compromise.

Sure, the large may be a very good deal, but that's completely besides the point. It's more soda than they really need, and they are wasting money by buying it.

When someone offers a size of soda that happens to fit their needs exactly, there's no reason they shouldn't switch to that. If their needs change they can always go back to their old size, or even a newer one.

Or to pick another soda analogy, imagine that the fast food place only charges for the soda cup. It's a dollar a cup for everyone. This is a GREAT deal for most people...they come in pay a dollar and get a cup of soda, with free refills. The fast food place does alright because it all balances out in the end, the people who drink a little soda subsidize the ones who drink a lot. Even people who only drink one cup of soda get a reasonable deal.

Now imagine you come in with 100 kids who only need a thimble-full of soda each (for the sake of argument). You're paying 100$ for the amount of soda everyone else is paying 1$ for! Overall, the pricing plan is reasonable...but for certain people it falls apart.

Why should those people go with a deal that doesn't work for them? It's better all around for them to find a better fit.

The fact that github is awesome and a great deal is completely irrelevant re the issue at hand. The point is some people don't need all the github awesomeness, they just want somewhere to stick their code.

If that's all you need, there's no reason at all not to go with a cheaper option.

That's not to say that the cheaper option is this guy's service....it could be any number of things. For some people this codeplane is a good fit, for others...not.

[cool-RR]

"Sure, the large may be a very good deal, but that's completely besides the point. It's more soda than they really need, and they are wasting money by buying it."

You actually put your finger right on the fallacy. It feels that you're wasting money by buying a GitHub account with 100 private repos when your repos are largely inactive. But the way to make smart economic decisions is not by measuring hypothetical waste (i.e. how much of the account you are using) but by comparing the options side by side. You pay more for GitHub, yes, and you pay for stuff you might not use, but if it saves you a few hours per month then it's a better choice than going for a service like CodePlane.

[M1573RMU74710N]

>, but if it saves you a few hours per month then it's a better choice than going for a service like CodePlane.

...and that's the hole in your reasoning. That is not a forgone conclusion at all...in fact it's a non-sequiter.

In the analogy these people aren't getting ANYTHING for paying the 1$ per cup (vs paying 50 cents for the actual soda used)...there is a theoretical benefit of free refills, or it being a reasonable price for the cup of soda...and for the people who use it, it's great.

...but the whole entire premise of this discussion is that for some people that's no benefit at all since they're not using it.

We've already eliminated all the people who are getting their money's worth out of Github, that's the premise of the conversation....we're talking about a service that is designed to cater to people for whom Github's pricing plan doesn't work for their needs.

Additionally, to argue that these people don't exist is a specious argument. I think it's an incredibly dubious proposition that there is ANY service which precisely fits the needs of it's entire target market.

>. But the way to make smart economic decisions is not by measuring hypothetical waste (i.e. how much of the account you are using) but by comparing the options side by side

Yes, precisely.

You make smart decision by weighing your own personal needs against your options. Everyone has different needs, and while Github works for many people, it does not work for everyone.

Again, I'm not prepared to say codeplane represents a solution for all these people...many will simply go to bit-bucket, handle it themselves, etc... but I think it works for at least some of them.

[fnando]

Nobody says that! I love Github. I used to have a paid account. I still have 100+ repositories in there. I just can't afford Github for my private repositories, which I think it's not for me anymore.

[cool-RR]

If you've got 40 private repos, I assume you're at the very least a moderately experienced professional programmer. Let's say for the sake of a figure that you charge a low price of $50 per hour. So buying a GitHub Gold account is like two hours of extra work per month for you, and you'll probably have to spend more than that on CodePlane (as a user, not developer) because it's simply not as battle-tested and extensive as GitHub. So I don't think it's worth it.

[Lewisham]

You're reading a lot into one assumption you've made. I'm a grad student. I try out lots of little things. I want to keep them, but I don't want them just on my hard drive (I like them to be available on the Internets).

GitHub forces me to open-source those small projects, and I'm usually fine with this, but lots of other people aren't. And if he can offer it for $9, then why shouldn't he? Your complaint is that his potential customers should pay more, because you think GitHub has better features, which he may or may not need. That doesn't make any sense. Having different offers and different price points makes sense, so I really don't see why you are knocking the OP for making something that fits his (and presumably others) needs.

[cool-RR]

"I really don't see why you are knocking the OP for making something that fits his (and presumably others) needs."

I'm making the case that it doesn't fit his needs, since his reluctance of paying the GitHub price is an example of this:

http://theoatmeal.com/blog/apps

[kelnos]

I don't see the parallel. Quite the opposite; he's displeased with what he sees as GitHub's high price for their lowest-tier paid account, and developed an alternative that costs less and offers more of the "bare bones" stuff (more space, unlimited private repos) instead of focusing on the higher-level collaboration tools and web interfaces.

How does a reference to someone finding little friction to paying multiple tens to hundreds of dollars for things while cringing at a 99-cent expenditure have anything to do with this?

GitHub bothers me, to be honest. I read a lot lately about how many people are using GitHub as a sort of "programmer's portfolio", and, more importantly, how many startups are asking for your GitHub URL as a part of your resume package. As if how many active repos on GitHub you have is some sort of even remotely useful metric as to how good a programmer you are. There's a lot of pressure to have a strong presence on GitHub, while their product offering doesn't seem to meet the needs of a lot of people. Not to mention there's tons of talent that uses hg or bzr as their VCS of choice; nobody asks for your bitbucket or launchpad URL.

[cool-RR]

"[...] he's displeased with what he sees as GitHub's high price for their lowest-tier paid account [...]"

And I'm arguing that his displeasure with GitHub's price comes from the fact that he's underestimating the extra amount of time he will have to spend as a user of CodePlane because CodePlane is not remotely as polished as GitHub. I'm arguing that this extra amount of time will not be worth the difference in price.

"[...] developed an alternative that costs less and offers more of the "bare bones" stuff (more space, unlimited private repos) instead of focusing on the higher-level collaboration tools and web interfaces. [...]"

It's not just collaboration and web stuff, it's reliability and security. Would you seriously trust a tiny service like CodePlane to store your code? Both ensuring it won't be deleted and that it won't be hacked into? If DropBox has trouble with those issues, would you trust a low-budget one-man-operation with your 50 repos?

"[...] There's a lot of pressure to have a strong presence on GitHub [...]"

When people evaluate programmers they often have to rely on far-from-perfect metrics, like university credentials. Putting emphasis on GitHub and ignoring the other forges is not ideal, but it's such a big improvement over the old ways. It's hard to get new metrics accepted into the mainstream.

[Lewisham]

...and now you are reading into what you think people's spending habits are, based on an Oatmeal comic?

What's your problem?

[cool-RR]

"What's your problem?"

I'm curious about the OP's logic. I believe I found a hole in it and I'm curious whether I have made a mistake or he did, and I'll be happy if he'll point out my mistake if I have one.

[eropple]

I'm a moderately experienced professional developer. That in no way means that I'm going to pay money for Github, a less-valuable service compared to one that has all the features I regularly use* that I get for free from somebody else.

Also, git annoys me. Thus, Bitbucket, and life is good.

* - Which is to say, source/diff browsing, a markdown-based wiki for some projects, and that's it. Github has a lot of features, but it also has a lot of completely useless features.

[watty]

It's probably a great price for most dev shops but leaves a gaping hole for companies who have many small projects.

[mtogo]

Bitbucket somehow manages to maintain a service of similar or greater quality or reliability and has free unlimited private repos. Github is charging more because they can, not because it costs that much to maintain.

[cool-RR]

People who think that Bitbucket is on par with GitHub are the same kind of people who said that StackOverflow could be cloned in a week. You focus on features but fail to see all the painstaking attention to detail that went into creating these sites.

[mrcharles]

IF you use the web-interface consistently. If you don't use the web interface much, or use it for simple text diffs, bitbucket is perfectly viable.

One funny thing about github is they put so much effort in to being able to diff images and other files, yet their space limits are too low for private repos, if you are versioning anything other than just text files.

[pjhyett]

All of GitHub's space limits are soft limits to prevent abuse.

[shadowfox]

Hmm. Why is it necessary to overly generalize and disparage folks who don't seem to think precisely the way you think in order to make a point?